


Space Gothic

by L_M_Biggs



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Face Sitting, First Kisses, Oral Sex, Phasrey, Reysma, Snippets, blood sweat and tears, bonding over food insecurity, but mostly lots of sexual tension, eventually, ideological differences, lots of all of the above, redeemed!phasma, references to the Phasma novel, reysma ficlets, some smut, toy dolls and first time giving gifts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-02-28 14:51:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 6,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13273761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L_M_Biggs/pseuds/L_M_Biggs
Summary: Phasma and Rey are cut from the same cloth. They recognize this. Whether or not they can find comfort in this revelation remains to be seen.((Previously Titled "What I Wouldn't Do"))





	1. The Chromium Woman

It was gratifying to find out that beneath her gleaming armor that Captain Phasma was human.

Rey had expected her to be just as chrome and hard as her armor beneath it, but the woman who stood before her, despite the sharp angles of her face and the handsome lines of her features, still had soft blonde hair, slicked back from her face, still had fine lashes and brows. Perhaps the most humanizing thing about her was the bruise mottling across her cheek, her eye, into her forehead. Her eye was swollen shut but other than that her face was entirely composed as she stared at Rey.

“I’m taking you back with me.”

“To die by the hands of your Resistance than by my own soldiers.” Phasma, she was no longer a Captain, perhaps she never would be again, glared at Rey.

“You can either come with me, and we give you sanctuary for the information you provide.” Rey folded her arms, her staff strapped across her back but ready to be drawn and used. “Or I leave you here in this waste to be hunted and killed by your own soldiers.”

Phasma clenched her fist, glaring at the girl before she looked away from the girl and out at the towering black spires, the shifting purple sands. Her helmet fell to the ground and Rey shifted, watching as the black and red cloak fell as well, then the gauntlets, the greaves, plates of armor shed like a skin. When Phasma stood, bare from the waist up save for the black underlayer, Rey couldn’t help but stare at her. Even without her armor she stood easily three times the size of Rey herself, all broad shoulders and thick arms, the muscles clearly defined even beneath her clothing. 

She looked like a warrior from a story, standing atop a mountain, looking with scowling eyes to the roiling sky. Rey had heard a story once, of a hero who had climbed a similar mountain, who had reached up to the heavens to touch the gods, to kill them and defeat them and bring fire down to the people below so that they might live, might survive. The scavenger couldn’t help but think that Phasma could either turn her back on those people or offer them such safety, such protection. 

A warrior from a time before this one. A warrior from a world so unlike the First Order.

“Take me to General Organa.” She ordered Rey, as if she were not the one being taken as a prisoner to the General. As if this had been her plan all along.

“Come with me.”

As they flew away from the planet Rey couldn’t help but look back at Phasma, watching the woman watch the planet disappear beneath them. 

"Why that planet?”

"Parnassos.” Phasma murmured. “It was once my home. I left it for the First Order.”

“Why go back?”

“I hated it. I swore to the Supreme Leader that I never would go back.” Glittering grey eyes the color of her chrome armor looked at Rey. “I also swore I would never aid the Resistance.”


	2. Coruscant Red

“What is that?” Phasma glared at the women who had gathered at a table, all of them with their lips painted with some form of thick red pigment, smeared over grinning mouths.

Rey was sitting among them, the girl laughing as she looked up at Phasma. 

“It’s lip paint.” She said, as if that explained it. “Girls in the New Republic would wear it!”

“Hmph.” Phasma didn’t say anything else as she watched Rey’s lips, the girl talking and smiling with the group of other women. Something burned deep and heavy inside her chest, trickling down to her stomach as she wondered what the girl’s lips would feel like beneath the grease of the paint. She wanted to smear the red across Rey’s mouth even further, wanted to make her red lips part on a gasp so that she could see and taste the delicate pink tongue of the girl. 

“It’s indecent.” She finally says, making the group look to her scowling face as she folded her arms tight across her chest. She was uncertain after a moment, if she was referring to her own feelings or to the paint itself. “You look like a Coruscant street walker.”

Rey glared back at Phasma for a long moment, the larger woman meeting her fierce gaze and feeling pleasure at the girl’s gaze so rapt upon her own.

After a moment Rey grasped Phasma’s chin and kissed her, hard, startling the larger woman. Phasma’s hands grasped at Rey’s wiry shoulders, but she didn’t push the girl back, her silver eyes wide as she stared down at the girl. The feeling of Rey’s lips pressing, smearing against her own was strange but good. Phasma had never kissed another, despite taking her pleasure as she had back on her home planet. Kissing was something you did not do on Parnassos. It was certainly not anything you did with the scavengers and the clans and the people who would kill you for your food or find. Even less was it something you did in the First Order, where attachments were not to be made at all, even among your comrades.

When Rey pulled back, Phasma’s fingers flexed against her shoulders wanting to pull her in for another kiss, to indulge in something forbidden that was now hers to take, to experience, to have.

“There. Now you look like a Coruscant street walker!”

Laughter from the other women and Phasma straightened and scowled before marching off, smearing her hand and wrist over her mouth as she flushed and stormed down the halls.

She didn’t examine the fact that she had stolen the tube of paint too closely. And when she sat in her single quarters that night she stared at herself in the mirror, watching the way her lips looked with the thick red paint on it.

She especially didn’t examine the fact that she liked the sight of herself with the paint on as she wiped it off.


	3. Change? For What?

“What was it like?”

“Hmm?” Phasma looked down at Rey, the girl sprawled over the Captain’s broad chest, a delicate, calloused finger idly tracing a nipple as they lay on Phasma’s bed. It was long enough and broad enough to fit Phasma’s bulk, but Rey still had to lay atop her lover if she wanted to be able to share the bed. Neither of them minded it.

“Parnassos.”

Purple shifting sands and black spires that reached towards the heavens. Crumbling ruins of what had once been a hedonistic society, turned to ashes and twisted wreckage in the wake of a nuclear holocaust. Scavengers banding together and breaking apart, clan rivalries and vicious cruelties enacted by those too desperate for what precious little they could get.

“It was a cruel world.” She said as she stared at the ceiling. She could almost see it, could almost smell the congealing blood and choking grit in the air. “Riddled with disease, with clans in constant conflict.”

“You do not miss it?”

“I hated it.” Phasma spoke with no room for misinterpretation, no room for misunderstanding. There was no love that Phasma had ever held for her homeworld. “Brendol Hux granted me an escape. I went back only twice.”

Rey looked up at her quietly, blinking at the woman. “Twice?”

“The second time was when you found me.” Phasma didn’t look down at her lover, her hand tracing over Rey’s spine. “The first time I went to destroy the last dregs of society on Parnassos.”

Rey sat up slowly, staring down at Phasma, meeting her eyes. She knew that the Jedi could likely see within her mind, could see the memories of faces she had killed, people she had known and destroyed without impunity. 

“Do you still not think me evil?” Phasma stared down at the girl, letting her glean everything, a lifetime of survival, of betrayal, of vicious desperation borne from fear and hatred and hunger. So much hunger. For food, for safety, for power.

Rey didn’t answer for a long moment, and Phasma let her eyes glide away from the girl’s, refusing to meet her gaze.

“I think you are a survivor.” Rey whispered softly into the stillness of Phasma’s quarters, stroking her work-hardened palm over the woman’s pale breast to press just above her heart, feeling the steady beat of it. “I think you can change.”

“Scyre couldn’t change me. The First Order couldn’t change me. The Resistance will not change me.” Phasma looked down at Red with a scoff. “What, will you use your Force to change me?”

Rey leaned up slowly, kissing Phasma softly, feeling the woman melt despite herself at the kiss. She had learned hard won bits and pieces of Phasma since the woman had come with her off of Parnassos. Kissing had been foreign to the woman where sex had not been. It was a soft gesture that Phasma never failed to melt for, to indulge in, to open up to Rey easily all for the soft, wet press of their lips. 

When Rey pulled back she whispered softly against Phasma’s mouth, “I cannot change you. But I believe you will change for me.”

Phasma’s gleaming silver eyes stared up at her before they flickered away.

It was the closest that Rey could get to an affirmation, one that made her smile as she stared down at Phasma.


	4. Sweat

Phasma snarled, pinning Rey beneath her on the training mat, struggling to restrain the girl’s wiry arms, her lean strength an even match to Phasma when they were standing upright. All it took now, with Rey beneath her on the floor, was the full weight of the larger woman to pin her down. Collarbone to hip, their bodies met, and Phasma grinned as she felt Rey buck against her weight helplessly. 

“I won.” Phasma panted as she leaned in, Rey leaning up and snapping her teeth at her sharply, the click of bone making Phasma laugh as she pulled back.

“Kriff off.” Rey bucked against the larger woman even more, and Phasma pressed her knees between the girl’s thighs, forcing her legs apart and grinning when Rey tried to use that to leverage her hips up even more, only to be met with the solid mass of the woman above her. 

Phasma leaned in and breathed in the scent of Rey’s sweat, her skin, feeling the girl’s thundering pulse against her own nose as she closed her eyes. Her fingers inched slowly up from the girl’s wrists, over to her fingers. Rey tangled their digits together, two sets of knuckles from two sets of hands white with the force of their grips.

“I haven’t had a fight like that in ages.” Phasma whispered, her tongue coming out to touch Rey’s throat, the girl shivering under her, her hips rocking upwards, now with a different purpose as she hooked her ankles over Phasma’s knees. “Want something other than scraps of affection, scavenger?” She growled into Rey’s throat, and the girl snarled. Rey tilted her head sharply to snag Phasma’s ear between her lips, nipping firmly at the cartilage as Phasma laughed and bit at her throat. 

Their hips rocked together, slow and even, the grinding pressure not nearly enough, their panting mouths inches from one another when they released bruised flesh from the grips of their teeth. 

“Give me what I want.” Rey hissed.

“Your Jedi mind tricks don’t work on me.” Phasma growled. 

“But you’ll do it all the same.” Rey’s pelvis ground against Phasma’s and the larger woman let out a low, throaty moan to meet Rey’s high whimper. “Because you want it too.”


	5. The Marketplace

Phasma had learned, in her time among the Resistance after her defecting, that she hated market places. 

They were always too loud, too crowded, too unorganized, and often times the people who she was tasked with guarding would do their utmost best to vanish within the crowd, leaving Phasma marching double time through the market to find them. 

Rey, for instance, was very prone to this. 

Phasma knew the girl was capable, knew that everyone knew the girl was more than willing and able to take care of herself, but often times when the young scavenger was sent on a mission it was Phasma who was sent along with her. They worked well together, and their fighting styles were easily compatible, both with hand to hand and with their weapons of choice. They rode in the Falcon and even on the nights they did not share quarters were easily able to stand the long periods of time isolated form the rest of the galaxy on the ship with minimal sniping or frustration.

The one thing that aggravated Phasma to no end, however, was Rey’s absolute insistence to go to the market in every Force-forsaken quadrant they mucked around in. Everything from high level markets and centers in enormous cities, down to ramshackle bazaars with their barely-legal (and often times blattantly illegal) wares. Rey wanted to see them all. 

The girl had been introduced to the concept of a wage, and Phasma had watched as the girl hoarded her earnings just as she had once hoarded food on Jakku. But now she could be found ponderously wandering back and forth between stalls, seeing things she wanted or liked, picking them up, looking at them longingly, only to put them back down and walk off. 

Phasma could only stand so much of the waffling back and forth in the crowded, rank, hot marketplace that they were currently in. 

So when Rey, after spending at least twenty minutes peering at a stall filled to the brim with soft children’s dolls in bright colours, the soft fabric sewn and crafted into a plethora of species, and didn’t buy a single one of them, Phasma didn’t think much of her subsequent actions.

Rey was just about to place a doll she had been cradling in her hands for the past fifteen minutes back on the shelf she had found it on, when Phasma plucked the toy from the girl’s hands and looked it over. 

It was a human doll, with black fastener eyes, soft, thin strips of fabric for hair, and wrapped in orange fabric to make a dress. It was a simple thing and Phasma turned her cold gaze to the trader.

“How much?”

The trader grinned with a mouth devoid of teeth and rumbled out the price.

Phasma knew that she should barter with the trader, that most traders would show no respect to an outsider who didn’t even try, but she was exhausted and frustrated and she wanted to leave and if this made Rey leave then she’d pay for the toy and be done with it.

Once the appropriate currency had exchanged hands, Phasma turned to Rey, held out the doll to her. Rey’s eyes were wide as they took in the soft toy held in Phasma’s enormous palm, looking comically small as the larger woman waited for Rey to take it.

“You bought it. It’s yours.” Rey said simply and Phasma sighed. 

“I don’t want it. I got it for you. Because you obviously won’t get it yourself.” She held out the toy and Rey hesitated before she let her hand hover over Phasma’s. The ex-stormtrooper sighed and held it out closer to the girl. “Take it. It’s a gift.”

Rey stared up at her silently before she accepted the doll, cradling it close in her arms and looking up at Phasma. She looked absolutely baffled and delighted, holding her doll and staring up at the other woman with her soft brown eyes. Phasma was abruptly reminded of how young Rey was in comparison to her. How different they were despite the similar upbringings. “I’ve never been given a gift before.”

Phasma didn’t mention how she had never given one before, how generosity was not something that came naturally to her. She simply nodded and grumbled, covering . “Let’s get back to the ship and get out of here. It smells like bantha shit.”


	6. Be Quiet

The first time that Phasma has ever been kissed was to keep her quiet. 

She had startled the girl during her escape, had walked across Ren’s young captive while the girl wore no armor and carried only a standard issue blaster. Rey had jumped and Phasma had locked her arm instinctively around the small frame that had run directly into her chest. Rey’s breath fogged the armor and Phasma opened her mouth. 

Phasma stepped into an alcove, pressing against the girl, pinning her easily in place against the wall as she growled into her hair. “You have escaped.”

“Be quiet.” The girl said in a monotone voice, and Phasma could feel the pressure of the Force against her. 

“No.” She gritted out, and even that single word took far too much effort. If she could not at least partially resist the Force then she would have been useless at keeping Kylo Ren in line. 

The girl panicked and whispered. “Take off your helmet.”

That command was more firm, the desperation of her emotions coloring the Force, making it more insistent against her flesh and bones. Phasma’s hands shook as she lifted the helmet, the hiss of the latches removing filling her ears as her chest filled with a raw rage and panic. 

“My stormtroopers-” Phasma began, only to be cut off.

This time not by the Force, which she could feel as an insistent pressure against her jawbone and throat, but by soft, tender lips pressing against her own. The thin scars over her mouth caught on the girl’s soft skin, and Rey let out a soft gasp at that, but Phasma couldn’t help but feel something shift inside her chest. Something viscous and dark and possessive leaking from her ribcage and sticking to her armor. 

When the girl pulled back it was to the sound of retreating stormtrooper footsteps, and Phasma’s eyes fixed on Rey sharply.

Phasma stepped back with a sharp, predatory grin. “Clever.” She placed her helmet back on, covering her face once more. “I’ll give you ten minutes.” Was all she said before she turned, leaving the girl with nothing but her stolen blaster and time.

It wouldn’t matter. Her stormtroopers would still find the girl, and bring her back, and Kylo Ren would not be the one to keep her. Not when she would be Phasma’s rightful prize.


	7. Food

One of the things about the Resistance that Phasma and Rey could agree on, irregardless of any ideological differences, was the food. 

Every day, without fail, precisely at the start of meal times, they were the first two in line to get their three times daily meals, Phasma with two trays piled high with food and Rey with her one equally full single tray. 

“Move over.” Phasma growled to one of the fighters sitting on a crowded table. The man scrambled away without hesitation, still intimidated by the ex-Captain as the woman sat down with her two trays and began to eat.

Stormtroopers and officers alike in the First Order had eaten ration bars in portions appropriate to her mass. Before that Phasma had eaten flavorless meat, potentially toxic plantlife, and all manner of other dreck that she and her tribe had been able to scavenge off of Parnassos. Rey on Jakku had only known the powdery taste of instant bread and the feeble rotten taste of veg-meat from long-expired military ration packs. 

Here, with the Resistance, there was food aplenty. Real food. Nothing artificial about it. The cooks were lively and chattered endlessly and served steaming hot meals, rarely the same day to day. They cooked for a hundred different species, cultures, and appetites and everything they made so far had been delicious. 

Rey watched Phasma as the woman mopped up the last of the sauce of one portion of her veg with a slice of bread from the stack of six on her tray, ducking her head down and hunching her shoulders over the tray instinctively. She knew that she ate the same way, her arms curled protectively round her own tray even as she ate more slowly than Phasma.

Rey recalled the first time that she had eaten such food and how Leia had carefully cut her off after a full portion. Rey had sobbed in apology, unaware of what she had done to deserve the food to be withheld from her, not realizing that her own stomach’s pain had been a warning rather than hunger. She had laid in her bed that afternoon, her stomach cramping through the process of digestion, trying to process the food without expelling it all.

Phasma had not had such guidance. She had eaten, and eaten, and eaten, and then proceeded to vomit in the hallway soon after leaving the mess hall from how much she had consumed, her body unused to the richness of the Resistance meals. Rey had rubbed her hand over the woman’s back as Phasma had snarled and choked on sobs of humiliation, wiping at her eyes and growling at Rey to leave her be.

Now, sitting beside the woman, Rey couldn’t help but smile when Phasma caught sight of her staring and the woman hesitated, pausing before she held out an extra slice of bread to the girl. 

There was no need to share or trade between them. There was food aplenty back at the service line. But Rey accepted it anyway, the gesture speaking in a language that she knew, that she had worried no one else that she ever met in the Resistance would know as well. A nuance that she had grown up with that so many others in the Resistance had not.


	8. Sparring

“In this corner we have the Jedi apprentice, the beautiful Padawan, the deadliest desert flower hailing from the junkyards of Jakku, Rey!” Sergeant Varkland had always been a fool, and Phasma couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the man as he prattled onwards. “Standing at five-foot-seven, Rey is all one hundred ten pounds of scavenger muscle! Her weapon of choice today is a staff built with her own two hands, watch out folks, this thing has knocked out men for several hours!”

Rey held up her staff and grinned as the crowd in the sparring chamber cheered her on. She stood in only her tight chest bindings and the leggings that had been given to her by one of the pilots, warm brown fabric against her sunwarmed skin. It was distracting, but Phasma was nothing if not focused on her goal.

“And in this corner, a woman who needs no introduction. You’ve fought against her, you’ve had your asses handed to you by her, she’s big, she’s mean, she’s got biceps the size of blasters, I give you Phasma!” Phasma rolled her eyes at the cheers but grinned at Rey and gave a playful flex of her arms, earning a flush from the girl as she did so. “She stands at a solid six-foot-three with precisely 200 pounds of nothing but pure First Order trained muscle, her choice of weapon today is a First Order issue shock staff!” 

Phasma lifted up her own weapon, the ends crackling viciously with electricity. It was tuned to give a light, painful shock, but not enough to cause nerve damage as it normally would at full power. She didn’t want to hurt Rey, after all. Though, looking at her opponent’s own staff she knew that if Rey wanted to hurt her, then the woman would doubtless have her in the medical bay with a concussion.

“Medics are on standby and this would normally be the point where I would tell you lovely ladies to keep it friendly, no hitting below the belt, no maiming, blinding, no hair pulling.” There was silence for a long moment and Phasma raised an eyebrow. “But the stakes here are too high, so anything goes in this knock-down-drag-out fight!” Sergeant Varkland stepped quickly out of the ring. “One two three - GO!”

Rey didn’t even wait for “three” before she was barrelling forward, swinging her staff at Phasma easily, inches away from striking the older woman in the head, blocked only by Phasma’s own staff held in both hands. 

“You will lose.” Phasma snarled with a wide grin at the smaller girl, locking her ankle around Rey’s own, pushing forward with the staff while jerking the girl’s leg back with her own, pinning her to the ground. “I’m going to raw you.” She whispered to the girl, already feeling her blood burning and boiling in her veins as she looked at Rey’s snarling face.

Rey’s knee connected with Phasma’s side in a solid jab and the older woman grunted as she was rolled onto her back, Rey pushing their locked together staffs firmly down against Phasma’s chest. “Not if I win.” She grinned widely as Phasma struggled to get her knees between their bodies to push Rey back. “I’m going to sit on your face.”

Phasma grinned widely, panting as she managed to throw Rey aside with just her own brute force, standing and twirling her staff before the two of them took their ready stances and began to circle.

“God, I love you.” She said as she watched Rey, the girl like a lean, wild desert cat prowling towards her prey.

“I know.” Rey said as she watched Phasma with equally eager eyes and a wide grin.


	9. Vernacular

The word was “vernacular”.

Phasma had stumbled in her conversation with General Ackbar, frowning as she looked at him. “The what?” She asked, bristling as his wide, round eyes fixed on her along with half of the room. 

He obviously seemed to not know what she meant, as he simply repeated, “We don’t know enough of the vernacular of the species to trade for land to build our base.”

The ex-Captain folded her arms tightly over her chest and nodded, frowning tightly as she felt her inadequacy grind against her jawbone and teeth.

The meeting concluded after an hour, where Phasma rarely spoke up unless asked for a response. She could feel eyes on her as she stood and left, could hear light, familiar footsteps following her. 

“Phasma.” Rey called out, catching up with the taller woman and keeping pace with her. “Phasma, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” The woman growled as she entered her quarters. She cursed that the door was too slow to keep Rey out as the girl followed her inside. 

“Something is wrong.”

“It’s nothing, Rey.”

“Was it about General Ackbar? You two get along usually, or at least tolerate each other.”

“Rey!” Phasma snapped, embarrassment making her hunch her shoulders as she glared down at the smaller woman. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Rey squinted up at her, searching the woman’s face quietly before she sat down on Phasma’s bed. The older woman sighed and rubbed her face, sitting down beside the girl and looking away. Rey had the horrible gift of being good at waiting. She wasn’t patient, but she was good at waiting out Phasma’s moods and anger.

“Standard is...” Phasma sighed through her nose and stared at the wall, refusing to look at Rey. “New to me.” Rey was quiet as she looked up at Phasma before the woman ran her hand over her face and looked even further away, her head turned entirely from Rey to hide her expression. “I’ve only been speaking Standard for six years.” She clenched her fist and Rey reached out to run her fingers over the strong knuckles. “It does not come easily to me.”

“There’s no shame in that.”

“There is shame in savagery.” Phasma snapped. “I was so... I was from a society so primitive that we did not even have proper Standard language. That I struggled to learn it but I learned it so that I would know it and my fellows would not.”

“Yes, but how quickly did you learn it?”

“Days. Essentially. Enough that I could strike a deal.” Phasma grumbled, still refusing to look at Rey.

“Precisely. When your people could not learn at all, you learned in days.” Rey whispered, stroking her hand over Phasma’s arm. “Who would begrudge you not knowing a few words here and there?”

“I must be smarter than others. More clever.” Phasma snarled. “Or else they will think me nothing but a stupid weakling.”

“I doubt anyone here will ever think you weak.” Rey says as she stroked over Phasma’s arm, her shoulder, leaning in to kiss over Phasma’s neck softly, her fingers combing through the shorn hairs at the back of the woman’s head. “Or stupid.”

“What about primitive?” Phasma snorted, turning her head slowly as her shoulders dropped and she was soothed from her frustration. 

“Never.” Rey smiled up at Phasma. “My woman of few words.” She murmured as she leaned in to kiss Phasma gently. “You don’t need many to get across what you mean.” A playful press of their foreheads together and a mischevious glimmer in Rey’s eyes made Phasma smile. “And sometimes you don’t even need words at all.”

Phasma couldn’t help but stare down at the girl, her silver eyes gleaming as she watched her, leaning in close to hold Rey to her chest. She tried, desperately, to convey a single thought through only her eyes, her expression, to let Rey know one simple thing.

Rey smiled and stared up at Phasma, kissing her softly. “I love you too.”


	10. Affection

Blaster maintenance was an easy task to complete. Something to fill the hours between duties when she could not sleep or did not want to occupy the training rooms. It was also something that Phasma had taken to most easily within the First Order. 

She had been handed a weapon, had been shown how to strip it down, to clean it, to reassemble it, how to maintain it and care for it. She had been given it back and told that it was her responsibility now. It was a grounding task, one that she had learned to do just as surely as she had learned to polish her armor, to bathe with a fresher, to eat her bland rations with a fork and spoon rather than her fingers. 

Pushing the charging cartridge into the blaster, she he held the weapon up, looked down the sights to make sure that it was straight still, and hesitated when she felt lips against her neck.

She paused, tilting her head and brushing her jaw against Rey’s soft hair, loose from it’s buns for the night, the girl stroking over Phasma’s shoulders and biceps. She could smell the soap that Poe had gifted the girl, the way it made her smell faintly of flowers and plants and green things never failed to make Phasma want her. Desperately.

“What is this?” She grumbled as she felt Rey’s lips on her neck again. She was used to the girl coming to her for relief, was used to taking her hard and fast against her bunk and then stepping aside to allow Rey to clean herself and stretch and sigh before she left. In all of their time together the girl had not lingered before like this.

“Affection.” Rey said as she nuzzled behind Phasma’s ear, offering another soft kiss there.

“Disgusting.” Phasma grunted even at the thrill of pleasure she felt at the gentle kisses, the touching only for touchings sake. Rey stopped, pulling back to raise an eyebrow at the other woman, and Phasma tilted her head sharply to look at her. “Do it again.”


	11. Wreckage

Rey could take apart anything for parts. It was a skill that she had learned through spending years taking apart Star Destroyers and TIE Fighters and all manner of other discarded wreckage. The Resistance tended to pick up the remains of their Fighters, would take them back to be torn down and reused. Everything had value and they knew that even if they could not repair that particular Fighter, they could use it to repair another.

The First Order would discard their machinery, leave it where it had fallen to become part of the landscape. They would simply build new ones to replace what had been lost.

Looking at Phasma, Rey couldn’t help but feel that the woman had been treated the same way.

Star Destroyers, despite their function, were beautiful. They were enormous, powerful, deadly ships, they were graceful in how they cut across the galaxy. Their sleek, powerful lines and the way their insides were perfectly maintained. Rey had not thought for a moment that the insides of The Finalizer were anything but beautiful and frightening.

Now, standing with Phasma, looking at the woman holding a Resistance uniform in her hands, staring at the double quarters that they would be sharing, Rey felt that she was looking at one of those cast off Star Destroyers in the dunes of Jakku.

“I know it’s frightening.” Rey said softly after a moment. “But it is right.”

“I don’t care that it’s right.” Phasma said, still staring at the room, refusing to move from the doorway, dressed in her black protective layer from her armor. “It only makes sense.” Her hands trembled only marginally as she held her new uniform. “Supreme Leader would have me killed on the spot if he ever found out that I lowered the shields. It is a logical decision to go to the Resistance for protection.” She placed her clothing in neat, orderly piles on her bed. Shirts, pants, underlayers, socks, and the one jacket that she had been given, already worn and handed down from a previous owner, with only “Phasma” written on the breast.

A woman with no last name, just like Rey. A woman with nowhere else to go, just like Rey. 

A woman who had been cast off, cast aside so easily by those who she had loyally served.

Rey imagined how Phasma must be feeling, her heart aching as she remembered the feeling of being abandoned on Jakku. 

She imagined, for a moment, pulling Phasma from the golden sands, just like any other First Order wreckage, and finding what inside her had been broken. She imagined that she could find the broken part and repair it. 

But Phasma was not a Star Destroyer or a TIE Fighter. She was not a blaster in need of maintenance, or armor that could have pieces replaced. 

Whatever had broken inside her, Rey was helpless to repair it.

Phasma carefully stared down at her clothing, and after a moment she turned her head and whispered to Rey softly, “This is what I must do.”

That moment, staring at platinum coloured hair and the sharp, handsome features of the other woman’s face, Rey could not help but think back to the insides of The Finalizer.

Beautiful and frightening.


	12. Survival of the Fittest

Phasma paced back and forth like a caged beast, blood dripping down her nose to her chin, her teeth stained with blood, the red droplets mingled with spit spattering as she shouted in a guttural language, more grunts and thickly rolled syllables than the clean, clipped sounds of Standard. She pounded her fists against the dark walls of her glass confinement cell; the black glass allowed her to be viewed by others, but that her own eyes could not find the faces of her captors. She still had the knife she had managed to rip off of one of her guards, a small blade, comically so in her broad palm, but she had slashed a soldier’s face when he had tried to put restraints on her wrists.

“I can see why the stormtroopers saw her as a legend.” General Leia Organa said as she stared at the fallen Captain. The beings surrounding her nodded quietly in understanding as they watched the woman within the glass cell scream out the General’s name.

“Leia!” The General turned at the sound of her given name, her brows raised at the sight of Rey storming over to her, looking every inch the angry, possessive scavenger that she had been when Finn had found her on Jakku. “Release her, she has done nothing wrong!”

“She attacked and disarmed her guard.”

“You tried to restrain her, she is not a prisoner.” Rey tried to keep her voice level, but failed to stop the trembling in her hands.

Phasma lifted the simple cot in her cell, throwing the metal at the glass and causing it to form a single faint crack. Her strength was prodigious and Leia glanced over at the medical officer, prepared to filter a sedative into the chamber if needed. 

“She is not a free woman either. She is a liability.”

“She told you everything she knew about the First Order! What more do you want?”

“Loyalty.” Leia turned to the girl, her mouth set in a firm line. “I don’t handle traitors well. They are, in my experience, prone to looking after their own interests.”

“Finn was a stormtrooper.”

“He left due to his own moral code.” General Organa pointed out, her hands at her sides. “Captain Phasma was hunted by the First Order for a betrayal.”

“A betrayal conducted because Finn and Han and Chewie held blasters to her head.” Rey pointed out, her fists clenched. “What was she to do? Die for a cause she did not believe in? And her betrayal allowed Starkiller to be destroyed.”

“She is still a liability. Who is to say she won’t return to the First Order when it is most convenient to her?”

“Who is to say she will?” Rey’s eyes had the penetrating quality of every force user that Leia had ever come across, and she met them with her own firm stare until the girl’s gaze flickered in surrender. “I will be personally responsible for her. Anything that she does, any time she steps out of line, I will bear the consequences.”

There was silence around them, broken only by the heavy panting of the woman in the cell, Phasma’s shoulders and chest heaving as she leaned her head against the glass, her eyes blankly staring at the surface as her breath fogged it and blood spattered against it in a thin spray with each breath. Her hand still clutched the knife, but there was an exhaustion to her that had been unseen by anyone in the Resistance before that moment. Leia turned her gaze from Rey to Phasma, then from Phasma to Rey.

“I’m going to give you one piece of advice before I let her out of there.” The woman folded her hands behind her back and looked up at Rey.

Rey set her jaw stubbornly, bracing her legs in a fighting stance even as she folded her arms over her chest, the lean, wiry strength of her coiled as if waiting for a blow.

“Never trust a survivor until you know what they did to survive.”


	13. Routine

Phasma always made her bunk with hospital corners.

Rey couldn’t help but smile as she watched the woman carefully making their bed. She had gone and pulled up the sheets that Rey had thrown haphazardly over the bed. The pillows were now on the floor, then the comforter, and the sheets were straightened to perfect symmetry. It was a comforting thing, Rey supposed. Phasma had lived a life without structure on Parnassos, a world ruled by chaos and the whims of any deity they believed in. Living as a storm trooper for a decade had given her something to build her life around, something with guidelines.

Phasma pulled the heavy tauntaun wool blanket over the sheets, folding over the blanket and sheet a precise six inches from the top. She fluffed the pillows carefully, two for each occupant of the bed, a decadence that Phasma had delighted in when she had hesitantly asked the requisition officer and he had easily passed over two extra pillows. 

Chaos was something that the Resistance thrived on, a sort of organized mess in the same way Andronian artwork was. Phasma did not handle chaos well, and in this she had placed herself in a strict routine. She dressed every day in a Resistance uniform, smart and neat and precise. She ate every day at 0800, a cup of caf doused in milk and a plate full of eggs, sausage and starched hash. And before she went to breakfast, she always - ALWAYS - made the bed that she and Rey shared. 

Rey watched as Phasma placed her doll in it’s place of prominence on the bed, leant back at the crevice between the two sets of pillows, the worn-soft orange fabric of the doll’s dress and the brown yarn of the hair a strange touch against the stark grey and white of the bedding. 

“You know you don’t have to make the bed every day.” Rey said, as she did every day, as she smiled at the other woman. 

“I know.” Phasma said, the response just as much a part of the routine as anything else. 

And perhaps that comfort alone was enough. If that was the case, Rey could indulge Phasma in the routine of it all to calm the frightening chaos of their lives.


End file.
